Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

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What’s the hardest thing an international superspy has to do over the course of their career? Raising a child, as we learned last week. But “finding a wife” is a close second, and that’s the next step of Loid Forger’s mission. And so, it is also the second episode of Spy x Family.

Enter Yor Briar (Saori Hayami, whose clear, bell-like timbre really adds a lot to the character), a mild-mannered civil servant with a younger brother in the state police. She works a rather unfulfilling-seeming job with a bunch of catty coworkers who seem to hate her mostly because she’s pretty. Also, because this is Spy x Family, she’s an assassin who works for the government. Her code name is “Thorn Princess.” This, objectively, is sick as hell.

^{You really do not know the restraint it takes to not caption every image of Yor with thirsty screaming.}

Yor’s an interesting one. Essentially, she’s the old “prim and proper lady” anime trope welded to the apparent incongruity of, you know, having been born and raised as a super-assassin by some kind of government program. (We don’t get many details here, and I suspect we won’t for a long time. Wouldn’t it be funny if it were the same program that Anya came from?) As with Loid and Anya, the show draws amusing connections between these seemingly unrelated things; you could easily say that Yor is simply every definition of the word “cleaner” rolled into one.

She’s also quite likable. Personality-wise, Yor is actually pretty forthright most of the time, and her difficulty with understanding social cues—including her coworkers’ attempts to get a rise out of her—and self-consciousness about not being “normal” seem to both mark her out as some sort of neurodivergent. (You will pry this scrap of representation, intentional or not, from my cold, dead hands.) In any case, she gets talked into attending a party over the coming weekend by some of those rude coworkers. Worse, when talking with her aforementioned overprotective younger brother in state sec, Yuri (Kenshou Ono), she lies to him, telling him she has a boyfriend who’ll be at said party. Suddenly, Yor Briar needs a bf stat. And that is where our other lead comes in.

Loid has become desperate enough to find a suitable wife for the academy interview that he’s resorted to having his infobroker Frankie (Hiroyuki Yoshino) run paperwork on every single woman in the city. (In literally any other context this’d be absurdly creepy. It still kind of is, but, y’know, spies.) He needn’t really have bothered, though, because when he runs into Yor at a tailor—she ripped her dress when doing some assassin stuff, you see—it’s love at mutual convenience. (Loid also finds himself flummoxed that Yor is able to accidentally sneak up on him, initially blaming it on “dropping his guard.” I wonder if he ever catches on?) That and Anya playing the pintsized wingman in order to get the two talking.

The party itself has to wait, though, because even with their alliance of convenience worked out, Loid has another assignment on top of Operation Strix; breaking up an art smuggling ring. This actually makes him late to the party, and Yor has to endure the frankly horrifying prospect of being at a couples’ party alone. This is where she spends some time fixating on how she isn’t “normal.” The party seems to wash out as this happens, with Yor being only dimly aware of her coworkers increasingly blatant badmouthing until one of them—-named Camille—literally gets right in her face.

It is at that moment that Loid arrives, bleeding from the forehead, with a flimsy excuse about “one of his patients” acting up. Camille promptly loses her shit over the prospect of Yor having such a hot boyfriend (I think Loid is like a 7 myself but I’m not the one being asked, here) and embarrasses herself by trying to mess up her dress, only for her brilliant plan of “accidentally” dropping food on her to backfire spectacularly. Loid sticks up for Yor as Camille continues to berate her, in a moment that’s very touching (although like a lot of such things it loses some of its power in the retelling.) The two ditch the party not long after, but not before Loid mistakenly refers to himself as Yor’s husband instead of simply her fiance or boyfriend.

This has repercussions almost immediately. The two end up having to flee from the art smuggling ring, who are still pursuing Loid. (He reassures Yor that these are still his patients. Hilariously, she completely buys it.) While they’re escaping, Yor, now genuinely lovestruck, manages to straight-up propose to Loid mid-chase scene. It’s genuinely sweet, and it’s one of the year’s best love scenes so far. Loid literally puts a ring on her finger behind a dumpster. The direction is just incredible.

And on that note, episode two more or less ends, with the imposing family interview for the academy being the obvious next obstacle for our cast to conquer. Until then, anime fans.

Oh, but before we leave for the week, the show’s absolute monster of an OP is worth highlighting. The song is pretty great in of itself, but the visuals are something else. I look forward to enjoying it every week as I continue covering the series.

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